Rethinking Blended Textile Recycling

Cotton + Polyester Should Not Automatically Equal Waste.

Blended textiles provide desirable performance during their useful lives but create significant challenges at end-of-life.

Cotton/polyester garments contain two fundamentally different materials intimately intertwined within the same fabric.

FungiBio™ is developing biological separation as another potential pathway.

Selective Biological Conversion

The process targets the cellulose-rich cotton fraction using selected fungi and fungal enzyme systems.

Conceptually:

COTTON/POLYESTER TEXTILE —> FUNGAL BIOCONVERSION —>

COTTON FRACTION - Biological conversion

POLYESTER FRACTION - Preservation and recovery

Natural Fibers Become Biological Feedstock

Instead of viewing cotton simply as textile waste, FungiBio™ treats cellulose-fibers as biological feedstock.

During fungal conversion, that carbon can contribute to fungal biomass, enzyme production and other potentially useful biological materials.

Suitable residual material may ultimately provide feedstock for engineered biochar production.

Polyester Becomes a Recoverable Resource

FungiBio™ is investigating whether selective cellulose conversion can facilitate recovery of polyester from blended textles.

The pilot program will determine:

Polyester recovery efficiency ~ Fiber purity ~ Polymer quality ~ Residual biological contamination ~ Cleaning requirements ~ Suitability for mechanical or chemical recycling ~ Potential recycled-material value

Until pilot validation is completed, FungiBio™ describes this stream as polyester preserved for potential recovery and recycling.

Target Feedstocks

Initial development is focused primarily on cellulose-rich textiles, including:

100 cotton ~ Cotton/polyester blends ~ Cotton/elastane blends ~ Denim ~ Viscose/cotton materials ~ Selected industrial and uniform textiles